CODE & Omega

A series of live improvisations by D.A.Wilson recorded in front of some of the myriad of cherished and rare vintage synths returned to life over the past few years in The Lab at Hideaway Studio.

All Recordings are Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio.

The Secret World of Vintage Synths

A selection of live improvisations and experimental test recordings...

All Compositions & Recordings Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio.

Relaxing With Electrons..

Made with several overdubs of various signal sources fed through a gorgeous 1968 Brüel & Kjær type 2107 all-tube regenerative swept band pass filter during final testing following the resurrection/restoration of yet another of these unique and wonderful units with modifications for creative use in the studio. 

The 2107 pass frequency is hand cranked to reveal harmonic content at up to a 50dB per octave crest.  At this sort of resonance little that comes out of the beast sounds even remotely similar to what goes in so its to fun to catch the harmonics on way whilst cranking the huge tuning dial.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2022.

1968 Brüel & Kjaer type 2107: Down to Band Pass Creek

Once again I’m on the inside — lookin’ out looking in.

SEM-filtered CODE Omega8 & @saintregis (Instagram) bring the water and its spirit to my eyes.

Single track purity, polyphonic power and purpose: sometimes it's disclosed like that.

Minimal sweetening, limiting and spot normalization, so do enjoy the wide dynamic range and culmination—now with bonus audio!

MSR Christmastime '22

CODEberheim 8

Blending a few layers of samples taken from 1938 Hammond Novachord No.346 with some previous live recordings I'd captured from the beast suddenly had me daydreaming of Lulworth Cove and the Jurassic Coast which is one of my favourite places on planet earth.

Obviously the Novachord doesn't sound like this out of the box but it often amazes me how easily just a few carefully chosen layers of material from the beast can quickly end up producing huge ensembles and washes especially when some are played at half speed.  I think this is in part due to the Novachord's six free-running vibratos which produce a very organic sea of wobbly goodness.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2023.

Jurassic Daydreams (Layered 1938 Novachord)

First solo Omega offering still sounds stunning 21 years later.

A few secrets, snips, reverses, in-song overlays, a touch of EQ, limiting, and “Gaucho” right-side-wet, make for a nice 90 (sec).

And yes that patch change madness was tracked in real time—sans punches.

Stock SEM & Mini SE filters…

Enjoy,
MSR

Phat Fu '23

Came across this dope Ebm @MonteNeuble SE-3X  bassline, in my needle drop travels, which I had to revisit and enlist in a pulsed paraphonic exaltation in DMaj; silky chord changes from “Onward Upward UFO,” a song written & produced in the late 1970s for the St. Regis brothers, by wonderful friend and Parcourse/health food store mentor, Norman H. Landsberg, assisted that sneaky downward modulation. 

The great James Levi (Herbie Hancock fame) and strongman Gary Calvin (on bass) kept the groove going at Bear West Studios in San Francisco—1st 24 track baptism, where “UFO” was recorded—and we brothers have tried to keep the funk analog ever since. Clavinet D6 is still with us: the one Norman unveiled at St. Regis & Leuenberger and taught us to play; ‘cause he was nice with it, "Cry Baby" style.

Celebrating his remarkable life earlier this month—brilliantly and with panache, thanks to Bob Yount (Landsberg & Yount) and Socorro!—brought his lovely spirit, song, and surprising, vast accomplishments to mind:

Founding member of Mountain, featuring Leslie West; Pointer Sisters MD—“Yes We Can Can…”, Lenny Willams (Tower of Power); sampled by Jay-Z (99 Problems), Kanye West, Tribe Called Quest—heard in films like "Barbershop" and "The Taking of Pelham 123.”

His group Hammer opened up for Leon Russell AND Miles Davis at Fillmore West… Wut!?!

“When tears come, remember brighter smiles can then show."

Miss them when they are here; that’s the Power of Love—which evrybody needs.

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/san-francisco-ca/norman-landsberg-11515731

https://www.discogs.com/artist/860823-Norman-Landsberg

p.s. SE-02 stereo leads :14; ‘02 “Dorothy Ashby” harp :21; incredible SE-02 Paraphonic Preach: 24; SE-3X dual leads :25; Omega8 “Phat Fu” goodness: 31, :35 Norman’s (Manny Moka) piano :33; Manny Moka And The Band on Fire heavenly perc. break: 39

Boomstar Brotherhood drums assist.

Angel Grey ‘3X photos courtesy of @vcousa

Enjoy,
MSR

Monte Moka

A brief live improvisation I recorded using the first voice patch I managed to program into the 1979 Crumar GDS shortly after I undertook the major restoration (previously owned by the late Klaus Schulze) of this extremely rare groundbreaking early digital synthesizer.   It is named in memory of the late Max Mathews who played a major role in developing the software routines and concepts behind key parts of the GDS as well as in many other areas of pioneering computer based music technology.

Original Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson 2014.

1979 General Development System: The Max Factor

A live improvisation by D.A.Wilson shortly following restoration of 1982 Digital Keyboards Synergy number 1032 at Hideaway Studio running in conjunction with the SynHCS host editor on a Kaypro II CP/M computer under HxC disk emulation.  

In this recording you can hear the Synergy's unusual continuously variable random vibrato in action.  The Synergy is an all digital synthesizer with 32 oscillators featuring both FM and additive synthesis.  It is a direct relative of the 1979 Crumar GDS.

Original Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson 2015.

1982 DK Synergy 1032 Awakens: Evolutions

ADAGIO FOR FEEDBACK

I’d like to believe Samuel Barber’s Adagio for strings cast a tender shadow on these changes & groove of mine.

Listening to Bernstein’s baton as I write this…. glorious.

CODE8: Strings mainly recorded in mono—not sure why—stereo flute/vibraphone/celeste colors, Crystal Manson “horn” blasts, Monte Moir rhythms, locked-to-clock LFO pulses, band pass rebels, reversed and initially randomly-sourced passages. AND FEEDBACK!—Crunch chords for key-man on their black ’n’ white island.

Get the heady, upper harmonic, distortion multiplier mod. for your Omega8/CODE8 today!

Boomstar SE-80: Snares, perc.

SE-3X: Hats, big bass note.

Grecco Burrato: Unarchived ModMax Pedals-blessed guitars.

SE-02: Immaculate basses and leads.

Stay tuned for the Prequel.

Best,
MSR 12-5-24

Adagio For Feedback

Prequel & Adagio For Feedback

CODE8: More stereo flute/marimba/celeste colors; Winwood leads; Crystal Mansion horn blasts; reversed and initially randomly-sourced passages; layered strings mainly recorded in mono—not sure why; @montemoir (inspired) bangers; locked-to-clock LFO pulses; band-pass rebels; 12dB filter envelope-driven bursts; location-aware Middle Earth detune spasm...

AND FEEDBACK!

Get the heady, upper harmonic distortion, warmth multiplier mod. for your Omega8/CODE8 today: https://studioelectronics.com/support/contact/

Boomstar SE-80: Snares, perc.

SE-3X: Main hats, big bass note.

@greccoburatto Unarchived (and yet juicy) ModMax Pedals-blessed guitars.

SE-02: Immaculate Keys 2 basses and leads.

Sumptuous and stirring (some would opine meditative) very recent #japantravel visuals (includes magically in-key bird song) courtesy of Carlo St. Regis.

Enjoy,
MSR 12-16-24

Prequel And Adagio For Feedback

A live improvisation by D.A.Wilson on an extremely rare 1982 Buchla 400-T computer controlled 6-voice hybrid synth (digital "arbitrary" oscillators into analog filters) running MIDAS-III complete with flat pressure sensitive Touch Controller housed in a custom Teak solid wood cabinet awakens during return to operation and overhaul and Lotharek Rev.F HxC virtual floppy disk retrofit at Hideaway Studio.

The touch keyboard was a nightmare to get used and it took a great deal of my concentration to perform this as the pressure-to-pitch modulation was pretty intense on the patch I'd dialled in that day but it certainly resulted in something from the heart.  The highly responsive playing surface opens up some interesting possibilites for expressive patch design and playing!

Original Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2015.

1982 Buchla 400 Awakens: Haute Tension

A live test improvisation recorded in front of a 1982 Rhodes Chroma analog polysynth after finally springing into life during a particularly arduous debug session to determine the root cause of a failed auto-tuning system during major overhaul at Hideaway Studio. 

Easily one of my favourite vintage polysynths (even over Prophet 5 and OB-X) and one I consider to be extremely underrated - a complex and remarkably flexible 16 oscillator beast with a warm but biting character all of its own!!

Original Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson 2017.

1982 Rhodes (ARP) Chroma: Autotune-ONE

Made by feeding a single sustained chord played from a Studio Electronics Omega 8 into a classic Brüel & Kjaer type 2113 L/C band-pass resonator bank, sampled through 21 different filter settings, and then randomly sequenced live into a 1969 Dolby A301 for some multi-band compressed magic!...

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio

Brüel & Kjaer type 2113: Random Resonations...

An improvised montage of sounds recorded live from 1938 Hammond Novachord No.346 shortly after partial restoration to working order by vintage synth specialist D.A.Wilson in the UK in 2009.  It is very rare to hear a direct modern recording (non-acoustic through chorus/delay/reverb directly from the generator chassis)of one of these instruments in action as less than 50 remain in known working order.

The Novachord is generally accepted to be world's first commercial all electronic polyphonic instrument featuring dynamics control and specifically designed to emulate timbres beyond those of an organ such as strings, harpsichord and piano.

See more on this extremely rare beast at www.novachord.co.uk

Original Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2009.

1938 Novachord #346: Creepy Montage (87 Year Old Tube Polysynth!)

Warping time using FM encoded tape... here two intertwining arpeggiated patches from my Blue Zone Kontakt library were recorded at 240bpm using only keys from the top two octaves onto two (out of 7) tracks of a TEAC MR-30 Laboratory Analog Data Recorder at 38cm/sec.  The FM encoded audio was then played back at 9.5cm/sec thus restoring the pitch but time stretching everything around it including reverb, delays and modulation effects.  The result is quite magical – not least because the tape machine itself adds a load of mojo in terms of smearing/limiting/filtering/noise resulting in a sort of crusty sonic Sepia effect.

No additional reverb has been added - its mearly the original reverb and delay tails ending up 4 times longer due to the tape speed reduction.

The MR-30 was originally intended as an Instrumentation Recorder to capture mainly slow DC signals (yes, it will record CV in parallel with audio!) and vibrations from transducers in laboratory experiments but it turns out the unit is capable of recording 7 tracks of audio concurrently well into the audio range (about 10KHz)and can playback and record at 6 different speeds from 1.2 to 38cm/sec.  In max speed a C90 lasts less than 10 minutes!

Here is the recording... warts and all.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2020.

1983 TEAC MR-30 Slo-Mo: Molécules d'eau (Lo-Fi FM Encoded Tape Experiment)

Recorded in just two takes, Alto Volo is a live improvised duet conceived and performed by D.A.Wilson on string ensemble (Hollow Sun/Hideaway Studio Novachord) and Thomas Grillo on Theremin in 2010.

For more on the 1938 Novachord see www.novachord.co.uk

2016 Digitally Remastered Version Copyright D.A.Wilson & Thomas Grillo.

D.A.Wilson & Thomas Grillo - Alto Volo (Theremin)

Having fun layering an assortment of patches I dialled into my 2004 Studio Electronics Omega 8..  

I have always liked the array of multi-mode filters this synth has to offer - it adds a great deal more sonic potential to an often overlooked and very capable analog beast.

NB:  Although it might sound like it, no phasers were used in this recording.. what you are hearing is copious use of the superb band-pass and high-pass filters in the Omega 8 being modulated by the LFOs.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2021.

2004 Studio Electronics Omega 8: Spring Cycles...

D.A.Wilson is an Electronic Engineer, Sound Designer & Vintage Synth Specialist with a particular interest in combining vintage tube, classic analog and modern digital technologies working as a synth engineer looking after a very considerable amount of vintage studio equipment for Will Gregory (Goldfrapp / Moog Ensemble) and a number of other internationally celebrated electronic musicians and producers.  Having undertaken several major restorations and produced custom electronic designs for a number of major artists including Jean-Michel Jarre, Dani is also known for fully restoring two out of the world's four remaining 1979 Crumar GDS and partially restoring 1938 Novachord 346 (the only known operational Novachord in the UK) to playable order along with developing and producing the new Elfin family of 8-bit polysynths and the popular MIDI Front Panel Animator (FPA), Filter Defeat Module (FDM) and XD-280 Drive Emulator upgrades for the AKAI S612 sampler.

Demos of the S612 Upgrades in Action: 

https://soundcloud.com/hideaway-studio/sets/hideaway-studios-s612-front


Hideaway Studio Kontakt Sound libraries may be purchased directly from: 
https://www.lootaudio.com/category/kontakt-instruments/hideaway-studios
 

..and a nice introduction by Cory Pelizzari to the Hideaway Studio Kontakt Libraries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-C7a3ChC9U&feature=emb_title


For more on releases from Hideaway Studio for Kontakt please visit the blog at:  www.hideawaystudio.net